The honeybee has been described as the most useful of all
insects known to man, because it provides man, as well as other
forms of life, with basic services vital to their survival. This
the insect has been able to do because nature has endowed it with
the special organs which enable it to live a peculiar way of
life. To understand the creature, a closer study must be made of
its anatomical structure which enables it, and it alone, to
perform such functions as gathering and ripening nectar,
collecting pollen and propolis, producing wax, etc., and
incidentally fertilizing flowering plants.

Like all insects, the honeybee has three main parts: head,
thorax and abdomen.

1. THE HEAD

Triangular in shape, the head has five eyes, a pair of
antennae, and mouth parts consisting, among other organs, of two
mandibles, the proboscis, etc.

a) The eyes: The seeing apparatus of the bee
consists of a pair of compound eyes and three small
simple eyes, called the ocelli. The compound eyes are
composed of several thousands of simple light-sensitive
cells, called ommatidia, which enable the bee to
distinguish light and colour and to detect directional
information from the sun's ultraviolet rays. The eyes of the
drone are larger by far than those of the worker or the queen
bee, occupying a large proportion of the total volume of the
head. They assist him to locate the queen as he pursues her
during the mating flight.

b) The antennae are a pair of sensitive receptors
whose base is situated in the small socket-like membraneous
areas of the head wall. They move freely in every direction.
The antennae's functions are to feel or touch and to smell,
and thus to guide the bee outside and inside the hive, to
differentiate floral and pheromone odours, and to locate hive
intruders.

c) The mandibles are a pair of jaws suspended from
the head and parts of the bee's mouth. The insect uses them
to chew wood when redesigning the hive entrance, to chew
pollen and to work wax for comb-building. They also permit
any activity requiring a pair of grasping instruments.

d) The proboscis: Unlike the proboscis of all other
sucking insects, that of the honeybee is not a permanent
functional organ; it is improvised temporarily by assembling
parts of the maxillae and the labium to produce
a unique tube for drawing up liquids such as sweet juices,
nectar, water and honey. The insect releases it when needed
for use, then withdraws and folds it back beneath the head
when it is not needed.

2. THE THORAX

The armour-plated mid-section of an insect, the thorax,
supports two pairs of wings and three pairs of legs, and carries
the locomotor, or "engine", and the muscles that
control the movement of the head, the abdomen and the wings.

a) The legs: Each pair of legs differs in size and
shape from the other two pairs and is Jointed into six segments,
with a pair of claws at the tip which help the insect to
cling to surfaces. The leg can be flexed at any of the six
joints. Its primary function is to help the bee to walk and
run, but various parts also serve special purposes other than
locomotion. For example, the brushes on the inner surface of
the fifth segment, (the tarsus) of the two front legs
are used for sweeping pollen and other particles from the
head, eyes and mouth parts. The same tarsi of the mid-legs
serve as brushes for cleaning the thorax, while the spines
found at the end of the fourth sections (tibiae) are
used for removing the pellets of pollen and for cleaning the
wings. Two important parts to note on the legs are the
antenna cleaners on the front legs and the pollen baskets on
the hind legs.

i) The antenna cleaner, located on the inner
margin of the tibia of the forelegs, consists of a
deeply-cut semi-circular notch, equipped with a comb-like
row of small spines. All three castes - drone, queen,
worker -- have this cleaning apparatus.

ii) Pollen baskets: The tibiae of the hind legs
of the worker bee carry a special apparatus, called the
corbiculae, or pollen baskets, which enables her to carry
pollen into the hive. These pollen baskets, concave in
shape, are surrounded with several long hairs which bind
the contents into an almost solid mass, allowing the
worker to carry the load safely home.

b) The wings of the honeybee, like those of most
insects, are thin, flat and two-layered. The front pair is
much longer than the rear. The worker's wings are used both
for flight and for ventilating the hive, while the drone and
the queen use theirs for flight only.

3. THE ABDOMEN

Like the thorax, the abdomen is armour-plated. It contains
such vital parts as the heart, the honey sac, the stomach, the
intestines, the reproductive organ, and the sting. As seen from
the outside, only six segments can be observed, but the adult
honeybee has nine, while the larva has ten.

4. INTERNAL ORGANS

The interest of the beekeeper is usually focused on those
parts of the bee which make it capable of producing honey and wax
and performing other duties necessary for its survival. Among
these are the hypopharyngeal gland, the wax gland, the scent or
pheromone glands, the queen's pheromone glands, and the sting
with the passion gland.

a) The hypopharyngeal gland is located in the head of
the worker bee, in front of the brain. It starts to mature three
days after the bee's emergence, and develops only when the insect
secretes royal jelly to feed the young larvae and the queen.

b) The wax gland, located in the lower part of the
young worker's abdomen, releases wax between a series of four
overlapping plates, called sterna, below the abdomen. The
worker begins to secrete wax 12 days after emerging; six days
later, the gland degenerates and the worker stops comb-building.

c) Scent glands: The worker bee produces three main
scents. The gland beneath the sting produces a special pheromone
consisting mainly of isopental acetate, which it sprays
around the spot of the sting. The odour stimulates other workers
to pursue and sting the victim. A second alarm pheromone,
released by glands at the base of the mandibles, has the same
function. A third gland, located near the rear of the abdomen,
produces a pheromone which, when released by scout bees, attracts
swarms of other bees to move toward them.

d) Queen's pheromone glands: In the queen bee's
mandibles are located special glands which produce and release
pheromones called the queen substances, which enable her
to identify members of the colony, to inhibit ovary development
in worker bees, to prevent the workers from building queen cells,
to help a swarm or colony to move as a cohesive unit, and to
attract drones during mating flights. The absence of the queen
substance (e.g. when the queen dies) produces opposite responses,
i.e. worker bees begin to develop ovaries and to build queen
cells, and a swarm searching for accommodation will not cluster
but will divide into smaller groups that cannot support the
normal life of a bee colony.

e) The sting of the worker bee is designed to perforate
the skin of her enemies and to pump poison into the wound. It has
about ten barbs, so that when it is thrust into flesh, the bee
cannot pull it back again. It breaks off with the poison sac
always attached to it, enabling more poison to penetrate for as
long as it remains in the flesh. The bee's sting is lodged in a
special sheath and is released only when the need arises. The
sting of the queen bee is longer than that of the worker. It is
used only to fight and kill rival queens in the hive. The drone
has no sting and is totally defenceless.